In his New Year’s presentation 2012 to all CERN’s personnel, CERN Director General Rolf Heuer devoted one slide on the CERN Open Hardware Licence.
The slide reads:

Implementing new IP schemes

to bridge the gap between CERN and society

CERN Open Hardware Licence

A legal framework to facilitate knowledge exchange
across the electronic design community.
Version 1.1 of the Licence was issued in July 2011.

In the spirit of knowledge and technology dissemination,
the CERN OHL was created to govern the use, copying,
modification and distribution of hardware design documentation,
and the manufacture and distribution of products

Knowledge Transfer | Accelerating Innovation

(from https://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=171463, slide 64)